So, let's see. To emulate the ERC-721 smart contract you would need:
1. An API to transfer ownership, updating the owner_id field in the database for the spaceship.
2. Legal obligations preventing EVE from reversing the transaction or tampering with your "wallet".
3. Legal documents making you the owner of said spaceship where you and only you can administer it in the future, forever.
4. A full and open audit log of every API call to said API endpoint.
5. Legal assurance 1 and 4 are true and transparent.
6. Measures taken to assure that the API and database will stay online and legal obligations enforced forever.
Even with all these fulfilled a rogue actor could wreck havoc since it would still be centralized, while in a smart contract these things are enforced in code. For me, that difference alone is so big that I can't even compare them.
In all honesty, it feels the only reason we don't just say "wow, it's cool that we have a technology that intrinsically supports this" is because it's a cryptocurrency.
1. An API to transfer ownership, updating the owner_id field in the database for the spaceship.
2. Legal obligations preventing EVE from reversing the transaction or tampering with your "wallet".
3. Legal documents making you the owner of said spaceship where you and only you can administer it in the future, forever.
4. A full and open audit log of every API call to said API endpoint.
5. Legal assurance 1 and 4 are true and transparent.
6. Measures taken to assure that the API and database will stay online and legal obligations enforced forever.
Even with all these fulfilled a rogue actor could wreck havoc since it would still be centralized, while in a smart contract these things are enforced in code. For me, that difference alone is so big that I can't even compare them.
In all honesty, it feels the only reason we don't just say "wow, it's cool that we have a technology that intrinsically supports this" is because it's a cryptocurrency.